


Wilderness Board

by azephirin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Canon, Cuddling and Snuggling, Domestic, Established Relationship, Food, Friendship, Happy, Happy Ending, Holiday, M/M, Schmoop, Sequel, Thanksgiving, University, Virginia, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:33:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>For that free Grace bringing us past great risks / & thro' great griefs surviving to this feast...</em> Also, deep-fried turkeys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wilderness Board

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [7A WF 83429](http://archiveofourown.org/works/49712), but if you don't feel like reading that, all you need to know is that Sam took care of Dean's little soul problem, Hendrickson got clued in to the way things are, and the boys are legally clear, though under different identities. Title and the non-deep-fried-turkey-related part of the summary from "[Minnesota Thanksgiving](http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2004/10/25/index.html)," by John Berryman.

Two days before Thanksgiving, and it's clear and chilly. Sam's sitting on the front porch with Rebecca, finishing off the tempranillo from dinner and looking up at the starry Shenandoah night sky.

"I'm glad y'all were able to stop by on your way down," Sam says. Rebecca and Sev, her fiancé, are on their way from Greenwich, Connecticut, where they live, to St. Augustine, Florida, where Rebecca and Zach's parents retired about a year ago.

"_Y'all._" Rebecca laughs. "You're turning into a Southerner, Sam."

"I was born in Kansas; it's not that far off."

"It's the Midwest. Do they say _y'all_ in the Midwest?"

"Parts of it."

"Fine. So you're getting back to your roots. If you start saying _ain't_, I'm never speaking to you again."

"_Ain't_ ain't a word, and I ain't gonna say it."

She swats him on the arm.

Dean and Sev—Greenwich Country Day to the core, the nickname short for Arbuthnot Garrison Kendall the Seventh—are inside shouting at the Virginia Tech/Kansas game. Dean roots for UVA in everything, of course, but if UVA isn't playing, he defaults to whatever Virginia team is. And if no Virginia teams are playing, he roots against any Kansas teams that may happen to be up. The fact that the University of Kansas is located in Lawrence has nothing to do with any of this. Of course.

There's a burst of swearing from inside: "That was a pass, you—" Dean goes off into a recitation of the quarterback's questionable lineage and unholy predilections for livestock. Sam and Rebecca laugh, and Rebecca pours half of the remaining wine into her glass and half into Sam's.

"I would never have thought they'd get along," she says.

"I wouldn't have, either, the way you described Sev. He sounded like a good guy," Sam hastens to add, "but Dean doesn't always do so well around money types."

"He is a good guy," Rebecca says, smiling.

Sam can't help but smile back. "So you're really going to try to push through to St. Augustine tomorrow?"

"If we can. Zach's flying in tomorrow, and I'd really rather not have to travel on Thanksgiving itself."

"And doesn't your family do that Thanksgiving breakfast thing?"

"I can't believe you remember that."

"Only because of the story about your uncle Gus making sauerkraut at seven a.m. on Thanksgiving Day."

"Good old Uncle Gus. He'll be there, with the sauerkraut. I keep telling Mom that it's her house and she can tell him to cook the stuff somewhere else, but she thinks that would be rude."

"It would be," Sam says, "but not as rude as cooking sauerkraut in somebody else's house. Seriously, Becky, sauerkraut?"

"Old-country family tradition, unbroken when they came to a country with other things to eat besides sauerkraut. So how many people are you guys having?"

Sam runs through the list in his head. It's a motley assortment: a few of the other older Honors Program students (more likely than their traditionally aged compatriots to be settled in Charlottesville and not heading home for the holiday); a couple of international students Sam knows (too far away to travel home, and without any real ties to the holiday anyway); Greg, one of the other mechanics at Dean's garage, along with his wife; and Nurit, one of Dean's fellow EMTs, and her partner. "Twelve?" Sam says. "I think? Nurit still doesn't know whether she's getting her kids—her ex, what an asshole—and Carlos might just come for dessert."

"First Thanksgiving out of the gate, and you're having twelve people over?" Rebecca looks amused and slightly horrified. "Do you have the slightest idea what you're doing?"

"Deep-frying a turkey," Sam says. "Greg's bringing the fryer. You have no idea how excited Dean is about this. And we're borrowing everybody's potato peelers, since we're going to need more than one and I refuse to spend the money on twelve."

"And they all know..." Rebecca trails off.

"Know what, Rebecca?" Sam's pretty sure what she was about to say, but if she really wants to talk about this, she can at least show him the courtesy of asking directly.

"About you and Dean," she finishes, looking away.

"They know we're together," Sam says.

"And do they know he's...that you're..."

"That he's or that we're what, Rebecca?"

"You know," she says flatly.

"That he's my brother? No, they don't know that, because legally he's not, and everything else aside, I prefer not being on the run from murder charges. And I'm sure that Dean appreciates not being dead and/or considered a serial killer, depending on the day and municipality."

Rebecca flinches, but doesn't back down. "What would Jessica think about this?"

He gets up, because he's having the nearly uncontrollable urge to throw his glass against the exterior wall of the house. He walks over to the other side of the porch and takes two slow, deep breaths before he even tries to formulate a response to that.

"Sam, I'm sorry—" Rebecca begins.

"I've asked myself that question," Sam says as evenly as he possibly can, "nearly every day for the past three years. Whatever you may think of me for fucking my own brother, the fact is that I've done a hell of a lot worse since she died—and, frankly, I did a lot worse by lying to her like I did. So I don't know, Rebecca. I have a lot to ask Jessica's forgiveness for, but Dean's not part of it." He takes another breath, stops pacing. "I'm not asking you to approve of it, or understand it, or even try to understand it. But I would ask you to have some fucking manners when you're under our roof."

Rebecca stares at him for a moment—then, unbelievably, laughs a little and shakes her head. "It's been so long since I've seen you in person; I forgot how much of a temper you've got on you."

"I'm sorry I let my language get away from me," he says, because he is. "But I meant what I said."

He sits back down on the step, and she puts her head on his arm. "I'm glad you're happy," she says. "Maybe that's the most important thing." There's another pause, and then she adds, lightly, "But it sucks that you have to be in classes with first-years, though. How do you not kill them every day?"

It's a deliberate subject change, but Sam appreciates it. They'll never agree on this topic, he suspects, and that's just something they'll have to accept if they're going to remain friends. "I try to remember that at some point I was eighteen and just as stupid."

"It must be annoying having to do so much over," Rebecca says. "I mean, you did all of that at Stanford, but you can't use it."

"Some of it," Sam admits. "The kids in my English class—I mean, most of them are OK, actually, but I've done literary analysis out my ears, and they haven't, and at a certain point it's just a skill that either you know or you don't. But the class is required, so there I am. I've forgotten enough math, though, that I actually had a lot of catching up to do before I started calculus again. And I took their Latin placement test, so I'm in with the juniors and seniors for that, and Ovid and Cicero are pretty amazing no matter how many times you read them."

"There aren't many people I know who'd be happy to be reading Aeschylus in the original for the second time around."

There's roaring from inside, and Sam and Rebecca both start instinctively; even after being settled a while, Sam's primary response to noise like that is "fight," not "Dean's yelling at the TV with Rebecca's investment-banker fiancé." A moment later, Sev and Dean both burst onto the porch, gloating—Virginia Tech won, which means that Dean won some money in a pool at the garage, and as it turns out, Sev did too, in a pool at Bear Stearns.

They sit on the porch a while longer, but nights get cold here in the mountains, and Sev and Rebecca need to be up early tomorrow to get to her parents' at a decent hour. Sam makes up the fold-out for them in the second bedroom, used mainly as a study for Sam and a repository for Dean's ever-expanding DVD collection. If they lay salt lines over the thresholds and windowsills, if Sam retraces the runes drawn in holy water and blood underneath the paint, it's out of habit now, ritual, routine rather than fear.

*******************

 

Rebecca and Sev leave just after six. Sam gets up to see them off, shaking Sev's hand, giving Rebecca a sleepy hug and extracting a promise that she'll call when they get in. "Happy Thanksgiving," she says, and kisses his cheek.

Sam's got a noon class—his Latin prof steadfastly refused to cancel—but that's it for the day. Dean's off: Greg closed the garage "since no one ever shows up for work today anyway." Sam climbs back into bed with Dean, tucking the flannel sheets around them and resting his head between Dean's shoulder blades.

"'m asleep," Dean mutters.

"I know," Sam says. He kisses the skin there anyway, tasting salt and freckles. Dean buries his head under his pillow with a grumpy sound of half-asleep complaint. Sam extracts him—eliciting another noise and a barely intelligible "said I was asleep, asshole"—but just so that he can turn Dean onto his side and wrap himself around his brother from the back.

"You're cuddling," Dean accuses, sounding a little more awake.

"Yup."

Dean sighs long-sufferingly, then says, "Sev and Rebecca get on the road OK?"

"Yeah, he apparently gets up at five a.m. every day anyway to go running, so this wasn't early for him."

"Freak. Seems like an alright guy, though. Despite that stupid-ass car."

Dean's hatred for luxury SUVs—both the cars themselves and, in most cases, their owners—is legendary, even more virulent than Greg's, which Greg's wife has said she hadn't thought was possible.

"I guess that's what you drive if you're from Greenwich, Connecticut, and you work for an investment bank," Sam says.

"You know a lot of people like that at Stanford?"

"Not that I really talked to. I was pretty surprised to find out Rebecca was dating—not to mention engaged to—one. But he does seem like a decent guy, despite the Navigator."

"Every time somebody drives one of those things into the shop, I just want to be like, 'Hey, man, sorry about your dick.'"

"I'm surprised you haven't yet."

"Why do you think I let Greg and Simon do the talking?"

Sam laughs, kisses the back of Dean's neck, the soft declivity underneath his ear. "It's early," Dean complains.

"I know you're the old one here, but I didn't think you were so much of a geezer that—"

"That's enough out of you," Dean says, and flips over, pins Sam to the bed.

"You're so predictable," Sam says, and kisses him.

"Bite me," Dean says, and then bites Sam.

What with one thing and another, they don't go back to sleep, and Sam's ten minutes late to Latin.

*********************

 

Thanksgiving morning brings another clear, cold day. When Sam runs outside for the _Daily Progress_, the air smells like snow—the first of the year, if it happens. He grabs the paper, runs back inside, drops it onto the kitchen table, and crawls back into bed. They have to get up soon—even with everybody bringing something, there's still a fair amount of cooking to do, and Sam has already remembered several things they forgot on their epic grocery expedition after his class yesterday—but he can spare a few minutes to defrost himself.

Dean's got the TV on. Sam's completely unsurprised when Dean puts down the remote at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade coverage. Dean watches this religiously, every year that he can. Some years they were travelling or hunting on Thanksgiving, but on the years they weren't, Dean always watched the parade, by any means necessary—including, once, breaking into an empty house with cable when they were living in a trailer so deep in the boonies as to be beyond the reach of any broadcast tower. Sam typically doesn't watch the parade: He prefers Dean's commentary to the actual sights.

"Christ, your feet are cold!" Dean yelps, but he doesn't fight when Sam presses himself next to him, head on Dean's belly; instead, Dean's hand immediately settles in Sam's hair as though assuming its rightful place.

It's sunny and cold outside, bright and warm within. Dean's fingers are gently brushing through Sam's hair. He'll listen to Dean describe the floats and mock the commentators, and then they'll get up and peel a lot of potatoes, and Dean will deep-fry a turkey. Which may be legendarily entertaining, or legendarily delicious (according to Greg), or legendarily disastrous, or all three, because this is Dean and he excels at that kind of scale.

Sam's fine with any of those, really. He'll be happy no matter what. He's got everything he needs.


End file.
